So Saturday I do a bike ride and put one of the bikes away in the basement next to the water heater. Life is good. I decide to do some yard work, cut the grass, trim some bushes the usual homeowner stuff. After cutting the grass I go back by the water heater to get my rake to clean up the clippings from the bushes and I have water on the floor. A quick check confirms a slow drip out of the case of the water heater. Joy!
Being Saturday afternoon, Ferguson is closed. So I check at Lowes.com and they don't have a direct vent gas water heater in stock, they can have it by September 3rd. I'm thinking 2 weeks of dripping water out of this thing is a bit long. Luckily, in addition to Lowe's we have a number of big Oranges in town. The Cary store has one, at least according to the website. So we head over to HD Saturday night to pick up the one in stock. Head to the water heater aisle and in the shelf space is a regular 50-gallon gas water heater. The employee looking at the shelf label says, there is your water heater. Me, looking at the picture on the box, and the SKU on the box noted that the box SKU and the shelf SKU don't match. Another more helpful employee comes along and we search the entire aisle and the one that is inventory isn't in the store. He helpfully checks the Apex store and they have 3! in stock. He has them pull it down and put in on a cart for me to pickup that evening. We head on over and it was waiting as advertised. I measure it and it will fit in the Edge with the passenger seat moved forward. Success!
We head home and after church on Sunday, I set to install the new one. The new one has a different exhaust design than the one I installed 8 years ago, but the same as the original in the house. So I plumb it up, with only one visit to the Lowe's store conveniently located 2 miles from my house. I needed new dielectric couplings as one would not come off the old water heater. I go to install the vent, only to discover I'm too far from the wall. Back to Lowe's for more parts, and while I'm at it I decide to replace the gate valve with a ball valve on the cold water side.
Four home improvement store visits and 5 hours and we're back in hot water. Yeah me! Now if I can just stop that stupid leak in my bathroom sink.
Being Saturday afternoon, Ferguson is closed. So I check at Lowes.com and they don't have a direct vent gas water heater in stock, they can have it by September 3rd. I'm thinking 2 weeks of dripping water out of this thing is a bit long. Luckily, in addition to Lowe's we have a number of big Oranges in town. The Cary store has one, at least according to the website. So we head over to HD Saturday night to pick up the one in stock. Head to the water heater aisle and in the shelf space is a regular 50-gallon gas water heater. The employee looking at the shelf label says, there is your water heater. Me, looking at the picture on the box, and the SKU on the box noted that the box SKU and the shelf SKU don't match. Another more helpful employee comes along and we search the entire aisle and the one that is inventory isn't in the store. He helpfully checks the Apex store and they have 3! in stock. He has them pull it down and put in on a cart for me to pickup that evening. We head on over and it was waiting as advertised. I measure it and it will fit in the Edge with the passenger seat moved forward. Success!
We head home and after church on Sunday, I set to install the new one. The new one has a different exhaust design than the one I installed 8 years ago, but the same as the original in the house. So I plumb it up, with only one visit to the Lowe's store conveniently located 2 miles from my house. I needed new dielectric couplings as one would not come off the old water heater. I go to install the vent, only to discover I'm too far from the wall. Back to Lowe's for more parts, and while I'm at it I decide to replace the gate valve with a ball valve on the cold water side.
Four home improvement store visits and 5 hours and we're back in hot water. Yeah me! Now if I can just stop that stupid leak in my bathroom sink.